Massive shortfall in global jobs market predicted by ILO

In a report published 26 September, the International Labour Organisation predicts that there will be a huge global shortfall in jobs before the end of next year if governments don’t act quickly and decisively. To date, since the beginning of the debt crisis in early to mid 2008, more than 20 million jobs have virtually disappeared around the world in developed nations.

Major economies are going to be affected by a severe shortage of jobs and the ILO is urging governments to take a different stance on their policies in terms of employment. The study which was prepared for a meeting of the labour ministers who met in Paris, stated that developed nations had lost at least 20 million jobs and that there is a grave risk that this number could in fact more than double by the end of 2012.

Creation of jobs is seen as a macroeconomic priority and that the slowdown in job growth must be reversed. There is a need to counteract the jobs which have been lost. Although there has been approximately a one percent growth in the number of jobs since last year, annual growth in the job market needs to be at 1.3% in order to return to where we were prior to the current debt crisis.

Even though developed countries have seen some amount of limited growth, the ILO is not excluding the possibility that this will be reversed due to faltering global economies. They are not ruling out a massive shortfall of jobs by next year and are asking governments to make this a top priority.

This is seen as something which should be addressed when G20 meets in summit and that it must necessarily be emphasised to stimulate economic growth. However, the ILO does admit that the figures are a bit skewed based on outdated information from India, China and Saudi Arabia, but they stripped those figures for a recalculation which is as accurate globally as possible. Their warning stands firm – if governments don’t act there will be an extreme shortage of jobs.